Concert Hall Installation / Dániel Baló, Dániel Eke, Zoltán Kalászi

Designed and built by Dániel Baló, Dániel Eke, and Zoltán Kalászi, the concert hall installation in the Archabbey of Pannonhalma was intended for the classical concerts of the Arcus Temporum Festival. Fitted for the gym of the abbey’s boarding school, the installation uses just two elements as the artwork’s clear but complex structure still engulfed the spacious dimensions of the gym. The light bulbs’ strict geometrical grid and the parallel waving layers of the translucent textile, which also improved the gym’s acoustics, were dropped from the ceiling into the space below. More images and architects’ description after the break.

In order to create an interior suitable for classical concerts, first of all we had to somehow fade out the gym’s characteristic appearance and find a suitable cover. But further on, we were eager to form such an atmosphere that frames musical events and partition the homogenous space through gentle transitions.

Therefore we created a spatial structure built from two items: an interacting system of a diffuse, translucent media and a geometric grid of point lights. The diffuse element’s hanging layers are made from a thermally bonded non-woven geotextile fabric. With the fabric domineering over the beams and walls, the room’s boarders are blurred by the different outlines and translucent, opalescent texture of the fabric’s layers. Also, they define the locations of the two main functions: the auditorium and the stage.

The raster-like item of the point lights are made from light bulbs emitting equal intensity to hang in equal distance at the nodes of a square raster. These bulbs are hidden among the waving textile layers above the auditorium, while they come into view above the stage bringing the musicians into focus.

With the use of the textile layers, we succeeded in improving the room’s acoustics: the hanging ribs by damping the sharp reflecting sounds and dispersing them through space acoustically generated a more comfortable atmosphere and musical experience.